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Posted by thehoff 1 day ago

Official: Ford's $29,945 Small EV Truck Is Called Fathom(www.motortrend.com)
30 points | 35 comments
everybodyknows 1 day ago|
> the architecture uses large aluminum unicastings to incorporate more than 100 parts that would otherwise be separate

They may have learned a few tricks from those teardowns of BYDs.

red-iron-pine 20 hours ago||
so what happens when something breaks? in theory this is 100 more points of failure

honest question, not sure how BYD handles this either. but BYDs are cheap enough that if you need to you get another...

m463 13 hours ago|||
that started with another US car manufacturer, tesla.

(although tesla had casting hiccups with the suspension components of the model x)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press

vablings 15 hours ago||
I honestly think unicastings are a horrible idea. BYD for most of its flagship vehicles do not use unicasting. I think unicasting should be reserved for the cheapest of vehicles in which an accident means the vehicle is recycled rather than unsafely repaired.
rasz 13 hours ago||
You can weld and glue aluminum, nothing unsafe about it as long as you cut out the damaged part.
addaon 1 day ago||
Shouldn't a Fathom have a six foot bed, by definition?
m463 13 hours ago||
maybe they deep-sixed that definition in the marketing documents.
aareet 1 day ago||
Not at that unfathomably low price
bob1029 1 day ago||
> Rather than a distinct floor component, the Fathom’s interior parts mount directly to the top of the structural battery.

I'm looking forward to the IIHS test results.

a012 1 day ago||
Safety asides it sounds like they build the car like a phone, so probably the repairs cost would be more expensive in the long run
vablings 15 hours ago||
Most EV's use a structural battery like this either for frames or direct attachments. Go have a look at some EURO NCAP testing of Chinese EV's
kristianp 1 day ago||
If it's about the size of a Maverick as the article suggests, that's not small at all.
GenerWork 1 day ago|
The Maverick is pretty small compared to other trucks. Smaller than a Ranger, and much, much smaller than the quarter and half ton trucks.
erxam 1 day ago|||
Smaller doesn't necessarily mean small. Rangers are just normal big, and upper tier trucks are absolutely monstrous.

You know what I thought the Maverick was sized like before looking it up? A Volkswagen Saveiro.

red-iron-pine 20 hours ago|||
smaller than a modern Ranger, not the original 2-seater

the modern Ranger is the same size as the old F-150

dyauspitr 1 day ago||
For what it’s worth, I absolutely love my f-150 lightning. I just wish we had 1 MW charging like the Chinese do.
bayesnet 19 hours ago|
I’d be happy to get the advertised charge speeds on my Equinox. The number of times I use a charging station that delivers ~120kW at most is maddening.

And it’s this kind of thing that stops mass adoption. When you fuel an ICE car, the pump just delivers fuel and that’s that. The price of fuel is prominently advertised and the experience is the same no matter the station.

Charging on the other hand is an exercise in frustration. Charging stations have different advertised power delivery rates; often they can’t meet those rates (is it the charging station? Is it your car? No way to know!); pricing is opaque; charging can stop seemingly at random .. and then you get levied the penalty congestion rate for using a charging station.

My parents asked me if they should get an EV. I advised a conventional hybrid. They are too old to have the patience to deal with all this.

dyauspitr 13 hours ago||
It heavily depends on what kind of driving you do. I would say 97% of my driving is local and home charging works perfectly while being 10x cheaper than an equivalent gas vehicle. For the 3% of the time that I do long trips I might have charging issues but frankly it hasn’t been a nightmare, just waiting a little longer at some charging stations.

Once or twice over the last four years, I’ve driven to an Electric America charging station to find that it is being renovated and I only have 30 miles of range left and next closest charging station is 50 miles away. That has mostly been resolved since Tesla chargers became available to Ford vehicles.

deflator 21 hours ago||
An electric ute? I'm interested. Seems like a good move!
Neywiny 1 day ago||
So they made the battery, arguably the most concerning thing to replace as the vehicle ages, ridiculous to replace?

At least they're not reusing names for entirely new things. Mustang Mach-e is so weird. New vehicle, new name. Good

erxam 1 day ago|
Aging isn't the real problem. Batteries are being found to last ages and ages more than they were ever thought to. By the time it needs to be changed, these will be considered as antiques.

I think the real problem will be in crashes and insurance. The amount of cars that will be totaled for a fender bender will be nuts.

vablings 15 hours ago|||
The idea of giga casting is horrible. One frame crack and its toast, I don't care how much people talk about that damn "Tesla glue" its forever structurally compromised.

Steel frame rails, good crash protection bolted to those frames and then a battery in the middle. Keep it simple and repairable.

dzhiurgis 1 day ago||||
Nah real problem, especially on smaller cells like 18650 back of the day is balance or temperature cable welds that randomly pop off, rendering entire pack useless and very laborious to repair. Rest of the things are very rare. If you crash hard enough to damage battery usually entire car is written off.

I've been looking for used Tesla in Eastern Europe. Battery repairs are so rare (I think I found 2). Post-crash rebuilds are basically 95% of cars sold here. 100% if car is from USA.

pstuart 1 day ago|||
Upgrading would make that a nice to have. 8 years or so and battery tech should have an affordable higher capacity unit that could give new life to it.

I got a refurbed Nissan Leaf with a 40KWh battery (replaced the original 24KWh battery) which added enough range to eliminate range anxiety whilst tootling about the metro area.

burnt-resistor 20 hours ago||
I'd pick a $5k cheaper, analog Slate instead for not having to deal with Ford's post-sales ads, subscriptions, and DRM.
pennomi 20 hours ago|
I’d buy a Slate above this even if the Ford was cheaper, specifically for those same reasons.
m463 13 hours ago||
Remember that vizio makes more money from "processing" your data than from the tv itself.

I think we need car-based ad blockers.

burnt-resistor 3 minutes ago||
Perhaps the way forward is an independent shop service to disable the onboard cellular modem(s) such that they cannot dial-home to load anything new. (It would likely disable the concierge and emergency services features too.) Similar to how there are/were alarm/stereo installation services.
kotaKat 21 hours ago||
Ford once again getting the messaging wrong and shipping what is essentially a glorified sedan with a useless external 4 foot bed.

Why do we have to keep making family-haulers for whipped dads that aren't allowed to have a two-seater? Why do we HAVE to force the entire family to go with us wherever we go? The wife already gets the lifted Expedition XLT to nearly run over little Jimmy with at the crosswalk (or as I lovingly call it, the 'F Series' - Canyonero strikes again).

Give us back a two seat basic pickup like the Ranger used to be, cowards.

dyauspitr 19 hours ago|
Two seaters means you need a whole other vehicle if you have a family.
graceful6800 19 hours ago||
Back in my day we just threw the kids into the bed of the truck and we came out fine
conception 16 hours ago||
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
k12sosse 1 day ago|
Shoulda gone with Canyonero as the name.

Love my ranger. ~700km on a tank of gasoline. Easy to work on at home. The factory installed upfitter switches make adding 12v additions easy.

atonse 1 day ago|
Hahaha when I saw ranchero I had the same thought and started singing the canyonero song in my head.

https://youtu.be/PI_Jl5WFQkA